4,173 km raced at an average speed of 37.210 km/hr. 128 starters and 81 classified finishers.

Henry Anglade took the yellow jersey in stage 4, but lost it when teammate Roger Rivière drove the winning break containing Gastone Nencini to victory in stage 6. Anglade predicted that Rivière had cost the French team the ultimate victory because Rivière would be unable to stay with Nencini in the mountains. Anglade was right. Rivière crashed in stage 14 trying to stay with Nencini while descending. It later turned out Rivière had taken opiates that made it impossible for him to control his braking. Rivière broke his back and never raced again and Nencini won the Tour.

Italian video of the 1960 Tour de France, including footage of Riviere being airlifted from his crash.

The Story of the 1960 Tour de France:

This excerpt is from "The Story of the Tour de France", Volume 1. If you enjoy it we hope you will consider purchasing the book, either print or electronic. The Amazon link here will make either purchase easy.

Jacques Anquetil won the Giro in May, beating Gastone Nencini by only 28 seconds. Anquetil not surprisingly took the lead in the Giro for good in the stage 14 68-kilometer time trial. Charly Gaul had tried to find his usual rabbit in the hat when he won the penultimate stage that took the race over the Gavia pass. But for the master climber of his age, it was too little too late. He finished the Giro in third place, almost 4 minutes behind Master Jacques. Neither Gaul nor Anquetil chose to ride the Tour that year. It's thought that Anquetil didn't want a repeat of 1959 with the loyalties of the team split between Roger Rivière and himself. The rivalry between the 2 had ended in disgrace for Rivière and Anquetil when they let Bahamontes win the Tour.

That left Roger Rivière the leader of the French team. Still, although Rivière had notable accomplishments on the track and he had won prestigious time trials, he had yet to notch a major stage race win. With riders like André Darrigade, Jean Dotto, Jean Graczyk and Henry Anglade on their team, if the French didn't win the Tour in 1960 it wasn't because their team lacked power. It would be because some other failing of theirs let another rider win.

The major challenge to the French would have to come from the Italians. Nencini was now at the apogee of his career. Nino Defilippis, Ercole Baldini, and Arnaldo Pambianco were great riders in their own right and as part of a team they were doubly formidable.

The British again had a team in the Tour. Most notably, this was the first Tour start for Tommy Simpson (the year before Simpson had moved from England, where road racing was almost unknown, to France). The move worked well for the ambitious Englishman. He won 7 minor races and came in fourth in the World Road Championships held in Zandvoort, Holland that year. Simpson was a man on the way up.

The Belgians had no shortage of horsepower. Jan Adriaenssens was third in 1956, wearing the Yellow Jersey for 3 days that year. In 1959 he had slipped to seventh, but was only 10 minutes behind the winner, Bahamontes.

The 1960 Tour went counter-clockwise, Pyrenees first. Continuing a long, although somewhat unsteady trend that began after the mammoth 5,745 kilometer 1926 Tour, the 1960 Tour was about 200 kilometers shorter than the year before. The 4,173 kilometers were divided into 22 stages (opening day was a split stage) giving an average stage length of 189 kilometers. This was roughly 20 kilometers longer than those of today but about 30 kilometers shorter than an average stage in 1950.

Belgian Julien Schepens won the first stage's 14-man sprint into Brussels. Nencini and Anglade, the alert veterans, were in this lead bunch while Rivière was in the first chase group, over 2 minutes back. It was the 27.8-kilometer individual time trial that afternoon that was really interesting. Rivière won, beating Nencini by 32 seconds and Anglade by 48. Because Nencini was one of the heads-up riders in the first stage, he donned the Yellow Jersey with Anglade second, 31 seconds back. Rivière was sitting in seventh place, 92 seconds behind. Rivière had the power to win races but he lacked the tactical know-how and brains to win. As Desgrange had said over a half-century before, cycle racing is a head and legs sport.

The next day 1959 winner Federico Bahamontes became ill and had to abandon.

The problems with the French team started on stage 4, but it would take a few days for the effects to become manifest. 6 riders including 2 French team members, Anglade and Graczyk along with Baldini and old Wim van Est made a successful break and beat a compact field to the finish by 6 minutes, 19 seconds. After coming so close in 1959, for the first time in his career Anglade was in Yellow. Rivière was in tenth place now, almost 8 minutes behind his teammate. Having come in second the year before and now in Yellow, one should have assumed that Anglade would at least be accorded a high level of protection within his own team.

It all came apart for the French on the sixth stage, 191 kilometers from St. Malo to Lorient in Brittany. Rivière attacked (one account says the move was initiated by Nencini) and took Nencini and the extremely capable Jan Adriaenssens with him. Alarmed, Anglade talked to team manager Marcel Bidot and asked Bidot to have Rivière stop his attack which was taking along 2 powerful riders who were fully capable of winning the Tour. Rivière ignored Bidot's pleas and powered on. He hated the easy-to-dislike Anglade (Anglade's nickname was "Napoleon") and had no intention of doing him any favors. The carnage from the effort was complete. The main pack containing Anglade finished 14 minutes, 40 seconds behind the Rivière group. Adriaenssens was now the Yellow Jersey with Nencini at 72 seconds and Rivière at 2 minutes, 14 seconds.

Anglade's reaction to the day's events dripped with contempt for Rivière's stage-racing abilities. Speaking about the French team's chances, he prophesied "we've just lost the Tour." Anglade knew Rivière would ride defensively in the mountains, trying to stay with Nencini, and he further predicted that Rivière would come to grief trying to descend while holding Nencini's wheel. Anglade and the other professional riders with deep road experience knew exactly how dangerous Nencini was going downhill. Raphaël Géminiani had said, "the only reason to follow Nencini downhill is if you have a death wish." After the 1960 Giro Anquetil also gained a deep respect for Nencini's bike handling and passed on a warning to the other members of the French team.

Anglade himself was an excellent descender. He and Nencini had a personal race, man-to-man, down a mountain in Italy in 1959 to settle the question of who was the best living descender. Anglade beat the dangerous Italian but he had the measure of the man and had seen Rivière descend and come close to disaster the previous year as well. Anglade knew what he was talking about.

As the Tour traveled south down the western face of France Adriaenssens kept his lead. After stage 9 and at the foot of the Pyrenees, the standings stood thus:

1. Jean Adriaenssens

2. Gastone Nencini @ 1 minute 12 seconds

3. Roger Rivière @ 2 minutes 14 seconds

4. Jean Graczyk @ 2 minutes 15 seconds

Stage 10 had the Soulor and the Aubisque climbs. Nencini decided that this would be a good time to dispatch Rivière but the young Frenchman hung on grimly. When he was dropped on the first climb Rivière regained contact on of all places, the descent of the Aubisque. Rivière won the stage with Nencini second, the 2 riders finishing with the same time. Nencini was now the Yellow Jersey with Rivière at 32 seconds and Adriaenssens at 79 seconds. Fourth place Jozef Planckaert was at a distant 7 minutes, 8 seconds. It looked like a 3-way race from here on.

Rivière's plan was exactly as Anglade had described. He would stick like glue to Nencini through the road stages and beat him in the stage 19 time trial. At that point he was a 3-time world pursuit champion, had set the world hour record in 1957, and bettered it again in 1958. His Hour Record was so good that it stood for a decade. Rivière could be forgiven if he thought that he could easily take back a few seconds in an 83-kilometer time trial.

The next day, stage 11, had the Tourmalet, Aspin and the Peyresourde. On the final climb Nencini attacked and increased his lead over Rivière by a minute.

Stage 11, Nencini alone on the Peyresourde

The fourteenth stage took the Tour through the Cevannes, the mountains just south of the Massif Central. On the first of the day's 3 rated climbs, Nencini was the fourth man over the Col du Perjuret with Rivière glued to his wheel. Nencini dropped like a rock down the very technical descent. Rivière was unable to stay with Nencini and went off the side of the mountain and into a ravine. His back was broken from the fall. Rivière was never to ride a bike again. At first he blamed his mechanics but it turned out that Rivière was so doped with painkillers that he couldn't manage his downhill speed. By the early 1960s many riders were using a horrible cocktail of drugs: amphetamines as a stimulant, Palfium to kill the pain in their legs and then sleeping pills at night to counteract the amphetamines. It is generally thought that the Palfium caused his crash by making it impossible for Rivière to feel his brake levers.

After the tragic events of stage 14, here were the standings:

1. Gastone Nencini

2. Jan Adriaenssens @ 2 minutes 25 seconds

3. Graziano Battistini @ 6 minutes

4. Jozef Planckaert @ 8 minutes 14 seconds

Through the Alps the relative positions stayed stable. Anglade tried to shake things up but Nencini never faltered. In fact, the Italians improved their position when Battistini won stage 16 which went over the Vars and Izoard. He was now within about a minute of Adriaenssens and could probably smell second place.

Battistini secured second place the next day when he got into the winning group (which included Nencini and Anglade) of the seventeenth stage that went over the Lautaret, the Luitel and the Granier.

All that was left to overcome was the stage 19 time trial. Run from Pontarlier to Besançon it was almost as if someone had designed the 83-kilometer downhill course just for Nencini. He didn't win and he didn't need to. He had a solid 4 minutes on his teammate Battistini and almost 6 on Adriaenssens going into the time trial. His performance that day increased his lead over both.

Stage 12: The peloton crosses the Causse du Larzac, one of a series of limestone plateaus in the Massif Central.

From there, it was an easy 2 stages to Paris. All that Anglade had predicted after stage 6 had come to pass. Rivière, through his amateurish, grudge-driven riding had ended up handing the Tour to Nencini. That was 2 years in a row that Rivière's selfish riding had probably cost his team the victory. Nencini was a gracious winner. He gave the bouquet of flowers he earned for winning the Tour to the French team manager, Marcel Bidot to give to Rivière. It was a nice gesture to the man who had done the most, however inadvertently, to give Nencini his victory. The highest placed Frenchman was Raymond Mastrotto, sixth place at 16 minutes, 12 seconds. Ma foi!